on the cover / By Heidi Walters

Without the Mill

He eventually became manager of the storeroom, and that’s where he’s been ever since, not counting the 13 months he served in Vietnam, nor the 13 months total he figures he spent on the picket line over the decades, nor other shutdowns including eight months the mill was closed in the mid-’90s. “My plan was to work for a little bit and then go back to college,” Vickers said. “But I was making really good money. And once you get in… .”

In 1965, GP had “2,000 people working from the bridges that cross the bay down to where the pulp mill is,” Vickers said. “Every day was abuzz.”

The peninsula was the county’s Iron Belt. Now there’s just the pulp mill and, farther south, Fairhaven Power, a wood-fired power plant. The other pulp mill that was built on the peninsula, in 1966, and run by Simpson, closed in 1990 — there weren’t enough wood chips to supply two mills anymore, and required pollution upgrades were too expensive, said Vickers. So, while his mill spent the $66 million for a state-of-the-art recovery boiler, Simpson’s mill just shut down.

“That was the biggest culture shock that I have ever experienced, as far as workers,” said Vickers. “Because, they made more money per hour than we did. There was 200-some of them, making well over $50,000 even then, and all of a sudden they’re making minimum wage. One of ’em, I know of, took a job as a tow truck driver. Some of ’em retired. Some of the salary people, with skills like purchasing and engineering, went to other mills. A few of ’em came to [our] mill.”

Vickers’ storeroom was bigger than Gottschalks. He purchased and distributed everything the mill needed to keep running — toilet paper, bolts, motors, gearboxes, machines, you name it; everything but the chips and logs, which were handled through another department.

“I think the pulp mill is absolutely a good thing for Humboldt County,” he said. “When they’re fully running, they pump about 70 million bucks into the local economy — that’s payroll, buying chips, paying vendors. There’s over 200 people working there, and everybody’s making well over $50,000 a year — it’s a living wage. They buy locally — they buy automobiles, they go out to dinner. Evergreen always stressed buying locally if you could. Even if the local vendor was a little higher than the guy out of town, we still bought locally.”

Vickers has signed up for unemployment. He might retire — his insurance would still cover him to 65.

But even if he does, if the mill fires back up it’ll need him for a bit. He’s the guy who set up the computer system in purchasing ages ago — and he has the code to get in.

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